Folks, it pains me to criticize other people who are on my side, and who I consider allies in the cause, but I feel the need to speak up when I think there’s misinformation getting out there to gun owners. WND has an editorial here:

The legislation would allow a person’s right to own a gun in the U.S. to be permanently removed under a wide range of circumstances.

“You’d think that when rabid, anti-gun legislators like Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy join together to pass anti-gun legislation, it would raise a few red flags,” the alert says. “But these two New York Democrats are currently planning to roll over gun owners with H.R. 2640 – legislation which would bar you from owning guns if: You are a battle-scarred veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; or as a kid, you were diagnosed with ADHD.”

Gun Owners Executive Director Larry Pratt told WND that those are just two of the circumstances that legitimately could be used under the pending proposal to permanently remove an individual’s right to own a weapon in the U.S.

This is just not true. Read the legislation. It goes even further off the deep end:

Someone in counseling during a bitter divorce, a child who at one point gets into a scrape on a school yard and is put on Ritalin, or even someone given “counseling” for issues such as depression during recovery from an accident or work-related injury are some other situations that could trigger such “disarmament by diagnosis,” he said.

There’s no provision in this bill at all that would create that circumstance. By now I’ve looked at it pretty extensively, and what Larry is claiming here just isn’t in this bill at all.

The plan, described in Congress as an expansion of the Brady Gun Bill that requires background checks for potential firearms purchasers, would require people who have such a diagnosis in their health record to be permanently banned from owning a gun.

This bill does not do that. Gun Control Act of 68 is what gave us life time prohibition for mental health commitments and adjudications. HR 2640 actually enables those with mental health problems in their past to clear their names, something they can’t do currently.

I feel like a broken record here, but Larry Pratt’s claims on this issue just keep getting more and more absurd to anyone’s who’s actually read the legislation.

It gets on my nerves. I’m tired of talking about it, and I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing it, but there are so many other issues in this particular area that GOA could be focusing on, and they aren’t. Larry Pratt has chosen to fabricate information about what this bill will do instead of offering legitimate criticism, or suggestions further improvements that need to be made.

Yeah, I know. Funny thing is I’ve heard Joseph Farrah speak before, and it was a really good talk. I was skeptical before going into it, but he seemed like a sensible guy, and what he said made a lot of sense.

A security clearance has much higher standards. For years you could be denied one if you kept company, or visited places, the government didn’t like. The FBI will call your friends and family to get a security clearance.

There’s no right to have a security clearance. It’s entirely up to the feds who gets issued one, though there are rules, they will just give you the rubber glove treatment. Sure, Congress could someday make it the same for gun owners, but they could also ban guns entirely. But they aren’t doing that with HR2640.

Is Mr Pratt really that emotional about the issue that he’s forcing himself down the road of stupidity, or does he truly understand what the bill says, and he’s lying about it to gin up support in the gun-rights community?

The problem is, the people who are bitching about the law I don’t think have bothered to read it. It doesn’t say most of what people like Larry Pratt, and the guy quoted in that post are saying it says.

They keep making arguments that are problems with GCA 68, not HR2640. HR2640 is far from ideal, but you won’t get your rights back in one well swoop. You have to take parts of back here and there as you can, just as it was taken away from us.

We’re not going to get NICS repealed. Try going into Nancy Pelosi’s Congress and telling her you want to get rid of this whole background check thing and see how far you get. This will make the current system work better for gun owners, and people currently prohibited because of mental health prohibitions. I do believe that. They will be able to clear their names. They can’t do that now, because of GCA 68

No sane person wants to see see some wacko injure, maim, or kill anyone, whether its with a firearm, a knife, or a Lincoln Continental.
That being said the question is who and how is someone declared incompetent or a threat to others.

Before anyone supports this bill you better look real hard at how your state makes these decisions. Up until very recently in my state, all it took to get a person committted was for a reasonably close relative to fill out an affidavit delaring you to be a threat to yourself or others or incompetent to handle your affairs and present it to a sympathetic judge. If the judge decided in favor of committing (HINT: you have just been ADJUDICATED)you were toast. No automatic right to a hearing. You could apply for one IF you could find an attorney willing to risk not getting paid, since getting committed pretty much lost you access to your assets. Now there is a mandatory hearing …. afterwards, but until and if the previous ruling is overturned you have still been adjudicated a mental case.

Think about that REAL HARD!!!

Then think about HR 2640 getting passed….and going through a messy divorce or child custody fight. If you haven’t noticed there are a lot of places where divorce attorneys file a TPO with the divorce filing just as a matter of course. In most place having a TPO filed means you lose your guns or the right to buy a gun at least until the order is lifted.
Now any reasonable, competent, ethical, non-politically driven judge isnt going to go along with this. What are the chances you are going to get one????